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This paper has been written in the style of a provocative essay. This paper aims to show how neo-liberalism has become the leading “policy doctrine” in higher education (HE) systems across the globe. This has put increasing systemic political and economic pressure on many universities which not only undermine but also “colonize” the Lebenswelt or “lifeworld” (Habermas, 1987) of academics.

This study draws on concrete empirical examples based on the authors’ subjective experiences within the higher educational sector and secondary sources.

The authors highlight and illustrate how the increasing dominance of “neo-liberal science” principles (Lave et al., 2010) severely damage the quality of knowledge production and working conditions of ordinary academics in both national and international academic communities.

This paper provides insights into the practical implications of the spread of “neo-liberal science” principles on the work and employment of academics.

The authors aim to trigger critical discussion concerning how emancipatory principles of teaching and research can be brought back into the Lebenswelt of academics to reverse some of the destructive effects to which this paper refers to.

The purpose of this study is to address the relationship between multinational corporations (MNCs) and grand challenges. Stressing the moderating impact of stakeholders and governments, it frames and introduces the six contributions of the special issue, equally divided into those illustrating how MNCs contribute to the existence of grand challenges and those exploring how MNCs contribute to addressing grand challenges.

Based on a review of the existing literature on the relationship between MNCs and grand challenges and recent developments in mainstream international business, the viewpoint emphasizes the need to move beyond a one-sided focus on the positive contributions of MNCs to grand challenges.

The special issue contributions reveal that even established MNCs are actively engaged in strategic efforts to perpetuate unsustainable practices and minimize the impact of societal rules and stakeholders. The contributions also highlight the complications when MNCs aim to tackle grand challenges.

Displaying positive practices of how MNCs contribute to the solution of grand challenges should not be considered a functional substitute for regulatory action, contrary to the frequent assertion of MNCs and their political representatives.

This special issue is the first one in IB to address the relationship between MNCs and grand challenges from an empirical vantage point.

This paper addresses the so far hardly understood contemporary restructuring trends in European Multinational corporations (MNCs), their rationales and their labour-related implications.

The paper is based on a systematic evaluation of academic and non-academic literature, as well as on more than 30 in-depth interviews with academic experts, management consultants, trade union consultants and workers’ representatives.

European MNCs continue to grow bigger, mostly through debt financed mergers and acquisitions. This triggers intensive cross-border standardization and reorganization activities that most prominently materialize as a sustained move towards global factories; a new wave of cross-border standardization in Human Resource Management, information technology and Big Data-driven, as well as compliance-induced reorganization measures.

This paper is the first to empirically map contemporary restructuring trends in European MNCs in a comprehensive way. Moreover, it addresses the managerial rationale underlying these restructuring trends. Based on these insights the paper assesses labour related implications that are both positive and negative.

The purpose of this paper is to advance micro-level theorising of sociocultural post-merger integration (PMI) by merging insights from international business and management research on the cognitive and affective dimensions of PMI.

The paper follows a narrative approach to review the previously separate literatures on cognition and emotion in PMI situations. It draws on insights from management research beyond the PMI context to integrate these literatures and as a result, develops a process model of emotional sensemaking in PMI.

An emotional sensemaking approach to PMI helps to explain when and why events might or might not motivate individuals to revisit their interpretation of a PMI and illustrates how and why similar PMI events can lead to opposite individual reactions and, thus, obtain heterogeneous integration outcomes.

The paper discusses how an emotional sensemaking approach can be applied to sociocultural PMI and points to new directions for future studies based on this application. As the model concentrates on the individual level, theoretical implications for sociocultural PMI at the meso- and macro-levels remain limited.

This paper brings forward the dynamics that underlie the processes and outcomes of individuals’ behaviour and reactions to PMI events. The proposed process model of emotional sensemaking in PMI responds to recent calls by sociocultural PMI scholars to promote a processual rather than event-based view of PMI, with a focus on individual actors and an emphasis on the multifaceted dynamics and outcomes of PMI.

This article takes stock of interdisciplinary research on Multinational Corporations (MNCs) by elucidating paradigmatic shifts in the world of MNCs in the new millennium and analysing more recent developments in the disciplines of International Business (IB) and Organization Theory (OT). The article also introduces the altogether 14 individual contributions of this 49th volume of the Research in the Sociology of Organizations series. It closes by looking into the questions of where interdisciplinary OT/IB research on MNCs is now and where it is likely to go in the future.

How headquarter (HQ) and subsidiary actors end conflicts and reach agreements is an important but still under-researched question in multinational corporations (MNC) literature. This conceptual article approaches these conflict dynamics from the Convention Theory perspective. Convention Theory draws attention to justice principles (known as “order of worth”) and to the material aspects in relations between MNC actors. We offer a framework that contributes to HQ-subsidiary relations research in three ways: (1) it links conflicts to justice principles, (2) it enriches the understanding of the stability of agreements, and (3) it sheds light on the activities needed for realizing preferred arrangements.

Kostova, Roth and Dacin called in 2008 for the advancement of a theoretical conception of the multinational corporation (MNC) that takes into account both power relationships among actors and the structure of its internal institutional field. While micro-political scholars of MNCs have started to answer the former part of the call regarding power, the second part has not been thoroughly addressed yet. Furthermore, the agentic aspects typical of power games and the structural aspects characterizing institutional fields have not been fully combined in a multi-level perspective of MNCs so far. Leaning on Bourdieu, we suggest an answer to the pending call. We theorize the MNC as a playing field of power emerging around the issue of finding a meta-rate of conversion of the actors’ capitals constituted in national fields. We conceive such issue field in a dynamic state due to the constant entry and exit of new players (e.g. through mergers, acquisitions or divestitures). This results in the need to continuously test the validity of exchange rates. The role of the metainstitutional field level of the MNC as a global category is also discussed.

The aim of this article is to develop the foundations of an actor‐centred, processual approach to examining the influence of cross‐border knowledge transfer and management learning on transnational institution building in post‐socialist countries. We argue that there is a need for more research to understand how key social actors go about (re)structuring, (re)defining and sharing knowledge within new international ventures. We contend that social actors can play a significant role in creating and structuring the “transnational social space” in which the new venture takes shape, exercising strategic choice that can mediate, adapt or even reject the apparently constraining effects of technical‐economic or cultural‐institutional factors. The role of social actors is conceptualized as a socio‐political sensemaking process, a perspective that would complement the current structuralist bias in the discussion about the emergence of transnational social space in international management research literature.

This paper develops a deeper understanding of the origin, development and implementation of overall change management strategies in multinationals and their implications for competence development and learning practices in UK and German subsidiaries.

The cross‐national research project applies mainly qualitative research methods.

Despite increased integrative attempts by headquarters, especially in two out of three cases, significant differences were found between German and UK subsidiaries in key capabilities and strategic competences as well as in knowledge sharing and learning.

Future research should focus more on micro‐political issues of learning and knowledge sharing, a topic hardly addressed in international management research.

This study shows the enduring influence of national institutional diversity on the management of the MNC.